Google Chromebooks–nowhere…

Written by Ian Nock on January 12, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Google-ChromebookThere has been some focus on Google’s failures of last year and they included the Google Chromebook in that. I am not going to argue that they are wrong – they are very right. The Chromebooks are not capturing the public imagination and are making their way into the niche arenas of people who have the most important requirements as being complete security and cloud storage. – in other words almost no one.

The key problem is that when customers are looking for a general purpose computing solution, they are very happy with a full featured laptop and spending £200 to £400 is ok with them as long as it does have flexibility. Chromebooks do not have that flexibility and were being sold at the upper end of the price range that the vast majority of ordinary people want to spend. In other words, they are stupidly expensive and do too little.

The niche below the general purpose computing solution is being happily filled by most people by either smartphone or low cost tablet and ultimately Chromebooks will need to gain features that normal laptops have or they will disappear via a slow death in my view.

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Full Featured Laptops or Cloudbook

Written by Ian Nock on July 19, 2011 — Leave a Comment

There are a lot of different and new machines out there for the Chromebook to compete with in the portable/ultralight arena. Considering the high price of these machines though, they are certainly priced out of the market in which they would be ideal – the below £200 market. In the £350 to £400 market, they are too limited and extremely expensive, particularly with the lack of ubiquitous network connectivity that will never exist sufficiently unless they can change ChromeOS to work more effectively off-line. The had so much promise. However if you are in the market for a new machine, then take a look at TechRadar’s look at £350 laptops. Considering I have just purchased No.1, the HP Pavilion dm1, on the list as my new primary Ultralight you should certainly find something useful in this article.

 

While Samsungs Google Chromebook is an interesting piece of tech, its not for everyone.

via 10 laptops you can buy for the price of a Chromebook | News | TechRadar UK.

 

 

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Most Useless 25GB Online Storage Gets Useful

Written by Ian Nock on June 20, 2011 — 1 Comment

Cloud is the key word on the Internet these days. Everyone gets excited about Google, Amazon and Apple for what they give you for quite small amounts of money. However there is something smaller – free. Who gives Cloud for free? Well Microsoft does, as they offer 25GB of storage with SkyDrive. So why are we not raving about it? Well because it is stuck behind the most appalling UI you have ever seen and only has limited integration with Live Mesh to allow only up to 5GB to be used by that service, leavin 20GB completely unused.

However news come about an update…

Microsoft tells me that the June 2011 update for SkyDrive will go live on Monday, June 20, so it should be available by the time you read this or soon will be. Reviewers were not given early access to the service, so I was only able to watch a live remote demo at the time of this writing. But as one of the few people who actually uses SkyDrive pretty extensively, Im excited by what Ive seen and by whats been implied for future improvements. SkyDrive has always been more promise than reality, but this update is going to go a long ways towards fixing that. I cant wait to see whats next.

via SkyDrive June 2011 Update.

This update seems to be giving us a way better UI, that looks like it will make it useful to actually sign up for the service. So remember one thing… you can use any email address as a Passport (such an old word) for accessing SkyDrive. Whatever you do, I do not recommend that Cross scripting hack hell that is Hotmail particularly as a logon for SkyDrive.

Can’t wait to try the new SkyDrive Out.

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Apple Netbook

Written by Ian Nock on May 30, 2011 — Leave a Comment

Rumours abound on the Internet over the weekend about Apple testing an Arm A5 based variant of the MacBook Air. That is an interesting proposition with the same limits as recent discussions about the Windows 8 variant for Arm – it leaves behind legacy completely. However this could just so easily be called the Apple Netbook, as one of the big reasons to use the Arm would be to seriously extend the battery life of the device and also to lower the price for the hardware, although as always Apple would still likely charge a premium – say £500/$600 for it.

On the very first episode of TiPb TV we joked about the 11 inch MacBook Air being more like an iPad pro, but deep inside Apple’s secret labs they might be working on making it exactly that according to Japanese blog Macotakara

via Apple secretly working on a MacBook Air with an iPad A5 chipset? | TiPb.

What do you think? Would you even buy it?

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Language Issues

Written by Ian Nock on February 21, 2011 — Leave a Comment

When you are travelling through another country and you are afflicted like I am by the English disease – inability to really speak new languages, it is a real bind but generally you muddle through with the help of obliging friends and colleagues, and very patient locals. This is fine but then you are faced with trying to figure out exactly how the PAYG 3G Broadband works, how you buy it, how you top up etc. You find yourself scouring through websites in the evening trying to figure out what ‘découvrir cette offre’ means, generally by copying and pasting into various translation services.

This is all a little clumsy. This is where my new found conversion to Google Chrome comes in, as it has a really good feature where it will detect that you are viewing a website in a different language to the settings on your PC and then offer to translate the text in situ.

It actually will show the text in the web page exactly where the original language text was placed. Not only that but it will also pop-up the original language when you mouse over the text, further aiding your identification of context to go along with the converted text (to sort out that engagement is actually contract in this context!). It will even keep context of your selection through this website, thus presenting the entire site for the session in your selected language. This is an absolutely fantastic feature that I use all the time and on its own could justify moving to Google Chrome (as well as the speed, auto-update, and sync capabilities). Obviously it does not work with Flash or graphic embeds, but I am sure that the Google engineers are working on this.

So fire up your current browser and download Chrome, you can run it all in parallel with your existing browser to ensure compatibility with your specific sites but I find that Chrome works with all of the sites I access without problems.

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Death of Netbooks…

Written by Ian Nock on January 21, 2011 — Leave a Comment

ASUS1005HAThere have been many posts today (like this, and this) as follow up to the Acer story about them dropping netbooks as a product and effectively focusing on touch screen devices. The follow up has been largely about retractions from Acer that netbooks will be an important part of their product lineup.

Many people have stated that Netbooks are dead because of the iPad, but to be honest I do not believe that in the same way that I did not believe that netbooks would kill notebooks. One thing is clear, there is now a lot more choice in the device that you – the customer, personal or business, have when you are travelling. This is all about choice and fitting the perfect device for the individual’s way of working. Some people will find the iPad and similar incredibly suited to the way they work. Others will find the netbook perfect. In addition there are many people out there who believe the 17 inch Macbook Pro is the ideal machine for their own particular work flow.hp-tablet

There will be a reduction in the market for the netbook, just as the notebook had a reduced market when the netbook was introduced. What should be focused on is the size of the combined market of netbook, tablet and notebook… and my impression is that this total market is growing with the new devices. You only need look at people standing in the queue for security at the airport to see the big difference from just three short years ago. Back then you only saw business people with standard 15 inch laptops going through security, and now it is pretty much the majority of people are having to take the netbook/notebook out to have it scanned. Netbooks are everywhere… just as in 12 months from now tablets will be everywhere.

What I believe will happen though is that along with tablets getting more powerful, then the netbook will also become a little more powerful and keep its small size. In fact it is the ultra-portable business machine that is the endangered device in my book. Why give the business person £1500 of machine to break, lose and create a security problem with – give them a £300-£350 netbook with a remote access solution or the £400 tablet. Remember most business people only use Web, Mail and Office…

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Web Workflow

Written by Ian Nock on June 13, 2010 — Leave a Comment

A long important requirement for me has been the ability to have the perfect web working environment on whatever machine I happen to be using – the netbook, the ultralight laptop and the clunky desktop replacement at home. I have long been using Mozilla Firefox with initially Google Bookmarks, but have since moved on to a combination of Xmarks and the Delicious extension for Firefox. Fairly recently however I have been moving away from Firefox for no other reason than to have a little spice… in fact I have been using Internet Explorer because of some corporate reasons, and Google Chrome because my main hosting provider for services has become Google, and for some reason Google likes to require Google Chrome for some of the nicer features.

A big problem for me has been getting all my extensions and saved passwords securely on all of these browser instances and I have had reasonable success with both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and in the last few days with Google Chrome. Safe to say, I believe I can now use whatever browser on all of my machines with complete access to all of my bookmarks and other browser stored data.

What is a problem however is making sure that all of my extensions for these browsers is on all of my machines. This has been a manual process but now comes this news: Google Chrome Working on Extension Syncing Feature | Webmonkey | Wired.com.

Now if this sees the light of day, this could start the push for me to change my default browser to Google Chrome. After all, Google Chrome seems way faster than anything else I have…

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iPad, NetPad, Smartbook, Netbook, Laptop, whatever

Written by Ian Nock on January 30, 2010 — 2 Comments

I could not let the event pass, the launch of the Apple iPad. This raises the interesting questions of what is this iPad? what does it mean? what use is it? At least from the mobile worker perspective.

To me it is simple, it just another device in the realm that has not got one name, inhabited by the continuum of webpad, smartbook, netbook and laptops. However where does it fit in? To cut the discussion short it is, as a device running a restricted unitasking OS, most definitely fitting into the cutdown low end area of webpads. This is despite the high price.

So does the mobile worker use a webpad? Not at all, unless it is there as part of a vertical market application need. As this therefore there is no interest here, and we can all move along. For the home, there can be a different argument I am sure.

But I hear you say, what about smartbooks and netbooks? What use are these to the mobile worker? They can be just as simple and not suitable for business mobile use? Well that may have been true once with the early EeePC 701, and is true of smartbooks in my opinion, but the modern netbook has evolved. It has evolved into ultra compact laptops as they had of old but without the high end price. More on that in a future post.

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Meshing around

Written by Ian Nock on November 5, 2009 — 1 Comment

I have blogged before about using the Microsoft Mesh software for keeping multiple computers in sync so that I can pick up any of my machines and pick up exactly where I left off with all of my most important (actually all of them) files with me regardless of which machine I have in front of me. I also use it to ensure that if I do lose any of these machines then I am safe in my knowledge that I have access to all (almost to be pedantic) of my files still.

mesh Well this week I moved one of my netbooks over to Windows 7 which because it had XP meant that it was a clean install. Of course, as part of the installation I set up Microsoft Mesh and selected the normal folders to pull down onto the machine. Well three days later, the sync had not finished and was looking like it was stalled. A quick check through the logs showed an error WinError 18, with the associated text missing file. Checking around I found that the Live Desktop was at 5GB used (which it was not before) and this immediately sprang an idea in my head. Mesh is pretty dumb at times.

It has always been the case that you could setup sync and exceed your online storage and just ignore it. In fact, Paul Thurrott blogged about it in the early days but what was missed was the effect of exceeding your storage, something that I only saw when I also checked my Broadband data usage through my ISP’s nice dashboard. When the online storage is full, Mesh continues to attempt to sync and in this approach it uses bandwidth over and over again so it creates network traffic needlessly. This is a bit poor, particularly when this also seems to hit the processor usage of the machines involved.

Removing the online data store usage of Live stopped the whole repeated sync and suddenly everything is happy again. The world is good, and I am no longer frustrated with the never ending sync.

So come on Microsoft, fix Mesh and give it better behaviour when online storage is exceeded. Additionally, why do you keep it at 5GB? What is wrong with integrating this with the 25GB Live Skydrive?

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Netbooks and Performance

Written by Ian Nock on October 24, 2009 — 1 Comment

ASUS1005HA Almost all netbooks (apart from some of the early Acer and Asus devices running Linux) are supplied with 1GB of RAM. Microsoft has further cemented this by defining lower license fees for Windows XP for computers with small screens and only 1GB of RAM, which means that this is the most popular memory configuration for netbooks.

advent-4211-msi-wind-mini-laptop-small At the same time, many people rule out netbooks as low power, sluggish computers that cannot replace a main machine. After my experience of the last month and a half, I would agree. This is when I purchased a new netbook after a problem occurred with my first one … the venerable Advent 4211C, an MSI Wind U100 rebrand. Amazing how I can call a computer that is less than 15 months old as venerable!

The netbook I purchased was the Asus EeePC 1008HA, a very nice and thin machine which I did not originally desire, but my options were limited. The machine I wanted was the Asus EeePC 1005HA but that was not in stock in the timeframe I needed. The problem with the 1008HA is the shorter battery life and the higher price, but I was desperate that evening for a machine. The other problem is that it came with 1GB of RAM compared to my upgraded Advent machine that had 2GB.

The other problem I quickly discovered was that it is closed up harder than a coconut. The machine is basically not upgradeable by anyone but the brave. Needless to say I proved braver than most, particularly after I managed to pierce the keyboard ribbon connector and cut two wires whilst trying to get at the memory. This is because you have to crack the case open after removing the keyboard, disconnecting multiple connectors and making sure that you use the dip switch to disable the battery feed to the machine (thus avoiding blowing the whole thing).  Who needs the left CTRL, Alt, Windows, Fn, function, delete and backspace keys anyway!  After all the fun with doing that I found I had the wrong 2GB memory stick. Putting my slightly crippled machine back together, I had to focus on my day job and with it using the still 1GB Asus.

What I noticed quite quickly is that the machine perpetually struggled with the lack of RAM at a scale that virtual memory could not help. The machine has had a minimum physical memory used of between 700MB and 930MB, and I now know what happens when the physical memory starts to run out… a machine that goes into coma for 30 seconds plus as it struggles to unload a program, to load another one. This has not been a good experience. If this was all the experience I had ever had with a netbook, I could understand saying that netbooks are useless.

Let us be honest, the sweet spot for Windows XP is 2GB ( just like the sweet spot for Vista I have found is 3GB ). This means that all netbooks are not as performant as they could be, and it will stay this way as long as manufacturers keep with supplying them with 1GB. I have started to see however netbooks and their like coming through with 2GB and this seems to be tied to supplying the machine with Windows 7… At least, Windows 7 Home Premium. I hope this continues.

So my best advice out there for the netbook owner? Get yourself upgraded to 2GB… you will then have a very functional, low cost, very portable machine that will perform every duty you throw at it except really heavy duty graphics/video or gaming. The other advice? Make sure that your netbook is user upgradeable. Me? I now have the machine I need but no warranty.

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